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Serum ferritin testing is a low-cost, readily available, and minimally invasive method for assessing body iron stores. However ferritin levels may be elevated due to a variety of other causes including obesity, infection, inflammation (as an acute phase protein), chronic alcohol intake, liver disease, kidney disease, and cancer.
Ferritin is a biomarker that reflects iron stores in the body. Testing ferritin levels on a blood panel is one of the diagnostic thresholds of diagnosing iron deficiency, says von Drygalski. The ...
Serum iron is a medical laboratory test that measures the amount of circulating iron that is bound to transferrin and freely circulate in the blood. Clinicians order this laboratory test when they are concerned about iron deficiency, which can cause anemia and other problems. 65% of the iron in the body is bound up in hemoglobin molecules in red blood cells.
The ideal is to increase the body's iron deposits, measured as levels of ferritin in serum, with the aim of reaching a ferritin value between 30 and 100 ng/mL. A clinical study has shown an increase in ferritin levels in those taking iron compared with others receiving a placebo. [11]
However this is unreliable as method of diagnosis since some patients show typical serum ferritin levels even at the latest stages of neuroferritinopathy. [1] Cerebral spinal fluid tests also are typically normal. [8] Ferritin aggregates found in the skin, liver, kidney and muscle tissues may help in diagnosing neuroferritinopathy. [8]
Iron can be stored in ferritin as ferric iron due to the ferroxidase activity of the ferritin heavy chain. [28] Dysfunctional ferritin may accumulate as hemosiderin, which can be problematic in cases of iron overload. [29] The ferritin storage iron pool is much larger than the labile iron pool, ranging in concentration from 0.7 mM to 3.6 mM. [25]
Ferritin genes are highly conserved between species. All vertebrate ferritin genes have three introns and four exons. [8] In human ferritin, introns are present between amino acid residues 14 and 15, 34 and 35, and 82 and 83; in addition, there are one to two hundred untranslated bases at either end of the combined exons. [9]
Iron deficiency, or sideropenia, is the state in which a body lacks enough iron to supply its needs. Iron is present in all cells in the human body and has several vital functions, such as carrying oxygen to the tissues from the lungs as a key component of the hemoglobin protein, acting as a transport medium for electrons within the cells in the form of cytochromes, and facilitating oxygen ...